Boy Dreamer

An Artist's Memoir of Identity, Awakening, and Beating the Odds

The year is 1957. Four-year-old Paul Ecke sits timidly at a foreign kitchen table, eating the first inferior meal of many in a foster home. Longing for his beloved mother, he sees her only on short weekend visits that grow more infrequent over time, as she tries unsuccessfully to hide a nervous breakdown, along with yet another growing pregnancy. Struggling to endure the strict rules of the house and the coldness of his foster parents, Paul begins to live in his creative mind where everything is possible and the grandest of dreams take flight. But after his family reunites, the adults he relies on both crumble and harm, as improprieties occur and secrets are slowly revealed that add more layers to the complexity of a visibly sensitive boy’s view of the world.

Despite—or perhaps because of—the emotional angst, complicated sexual identity issues, and deep loss he experiences, Paul cultivates a profound gift of creative genius. Vibrant with candor and resonant with details of coming of age in ’60s and ’70s California, as well as of bravely thriving for a decade with cancer, Boy Dreamer is a moving and ultimately triumphant story of a man who discovers his truth and courageously lives it, in a life brimming with love, art, gratitude, and beauty.